(a) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel, while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the gospels was written by the person whose name it bears.
To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four gospels, but what he conceives to be God's reason for ordaining that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.
Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four cherubim, there must be four gospels. All this however is an early attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to demonstrate historical fact. L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished—John the Apostle and John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued previous tradition. R. W. Dale, Living Christ and Four Gospels, 145—“Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.” See Hastings' Bible Dictionary, 2:695.
(b) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of “memoirs (ἀπομνημονεύματα) of Jesus Christ,” and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory, are evidently cited from our gospels.
To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Justin Martyr uses the term “memoirs”instead of “gospels.” We reply that he elsewhere uses the term “gospels” and identifies the “memoirs” with them: Apol., 1:66—“The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels,” i. e., not memoirs, but gospels, was the proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses the term “memoirs”, or “memorabilia”, which Xenophon had used as the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin's repeated statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by apostles,”and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin's use of the word “memoirs” is his use of the term “Sunday”, instead of Sabbath: Apol. 1:67—“On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.” Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal authority with the O. T. Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly quotes the words and acts of Jesus' life from a written source, using the word γέγραπται. See Morison, Com. on Mat., ix; Hemphill, Literature of Second Century, 234.
To Justin's testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the words spoken from heaven at the Savior's baptism, he makes them to be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting Psalm 2:7, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel, Mat. 3:17. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory, quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the Pentateuch for two facts which it does not contain; but we should not argue from this that he did not possess our present Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace, and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their genuineness,—yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels. Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the different evangelists—a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr's testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 49, note. B. W. Bacon, Introd. to N. T., speaks of Justin as “writing circa 155 A. D.”
(c) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a “hearer of John,” testifies that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles (τὰ λόγια),” [pg 149] and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, (ὕστερον Πέτρῳ) [or under Peter's direction], an unsystematic account (οὐ τάξει)” of the same events and discourses.
To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew, while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same. Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual; Matthew, like James, might write both Hebrew and Greek. While B. W. Bacon gives to the writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A. D., Lightfoot gives that of 130 A. D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember stories told him so far back as 80 A. D., by men who were youths at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work of Papias had for its title Λογίων κυριακῶν ἐξήγησις—“Exposition of Oracles relating to the Lord” = Commentaries on the Gospels. Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the quotations from the O. T. in Jesus' discourses in Matthew are all taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral version of Christ's discourses the version of these already existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis of true teaching, the “deposit”—τὴν παραθήκην—committed to Timothy (1 Tim. 6:20; 2 Tim. 1:12, 14), the same story told many times and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly, written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems probable from the fact that the Oriental name for “tares,” zawān, (Mat. 13:25) has been transliterated into Greek, ζιζάνια. Morison, Com. on Mat., thinks that Matthew originally wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the so-called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew. Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 267.
To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) That Mark is the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so far as logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus' teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and 9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and 12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel describes our Lord's preparation for his death, his progress to Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introd. to N. T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life of Jesus, 1:27-39.
(d) The Apostolic Fathers,—Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166),—companions and friends of the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is represented.